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UNESCO
Chair in interdisciplinary Biotechnology 1997/98
The Chair is associated
during the academic year 1998/1999 with the Department of Biology, Laboratory
of Molecular Pathology, headed by Professor Vittorio Colizzi.
More specifically, the following tasks of the Chair were defined:
- organisation of the course on "Immunotechnology in Biology and
Medicine"
- research activities related to the fundamental interdisciplinary problems
of biotechnology.
The appointment as the first chair co-holder has been given to Professor
Marek Zembala, Department of Clinical Immunology, Jagiellonian University
Medical College in Cracow.
Dr. E. Carnieri, Dr. M. Mattei, and Dr. P. Piselli from the group of Professor
Colizzi supported the activities of the chair. Furthermore, Professor G.
Lauro (Dept. of Biology, University of Rome III) and Professor A. Salerno
(Dept. of Medicine, University of Palermo and Campus Biomedico) took part
in the teaching activities.
The course entitled "Immunotechnology in Biology and Medicine"
was open to students of the Faculties of Medicine and Science of all Universities
of Rome and has been run during the second semester of the academic year
1997/98. The official language was English, with introduction and summary
additionally in Italian language.
The course was designed to give updated information on the recent advances
in immuno- and bio-technologies applicable to research and medicine, with
particular attention to future directions. It covered the application of
modern immunotechnologies in the three broad fields of cancer, inflammation
and infection, and the possible outcome for diagnosis, prophylaxis and treatment
of human diseases as well as biomedical and pharmaceutical research.
Detailed practical information was provided at the end of the course on
the use of certain specific techniques, e.g. in the characterisation of
cells by phenotyping, sorting, purging, isolation and other. The students
were also provided with textbooks containing summaries of the lectures and
abstracts of important points. The overall assessment of the course was
positive, the choice of topics and the level of the course was judged good
to excellent, and quality of teaching was assessed very favorably.
However, critics have been made by some participants judging the level to
be too high, and some students complained about the difficulties in understanding
details because of their limited knowledge of English. Interestingly, all
students indicated the requirement for an introduction of basic immunological
mechanisms as preparation for the course or at its beginning, and all of
them considered the course to be useful since it gave them a better understanding
of the progress in immunotechnology. |
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